Finding God in the Ordinary

God comes to us in ordinary ways. 

In 2017, I was in my first year teaching at a new school. As I started the year, I had a 1.5 year old, a 3 year old, a 5 year old and a husband whose impending yearlong deployment to Afghanistan loomed over us and our future. Some may think it’s good to know as early as possible about a year long deployment that would include an additional four months of spin up training; while it helped logistically for sure, the experience also brought an unhealthy dose of stress to my husband and me. 

His deployment was scheduled for March 2018, and as my school year went on and that day grew closer, I was in the middle of my second semester at work. I only really knew the teachers who were new since we had a lot of meetings together and my department since we all shared classrooms and an office. (My colleagues were amazing with sharing lessons and helping me survive that year.)

As my husband’s deployment date grew closer, I had planned to take a day off so we could get all of the logistics done, as there were some pre-deployment tasks I needed to be present for, too. And then—unexpectedly— the deployment date moved forward a week. The plan we had built fell apart, and everything shifted forward to ensure the tasks that needed to be done could be completed before his departure. 

I moved my day off forward a week to a Friday; he was supposed to leave the following Sunday, Then we were hit with another dose of something unexpected to make this time even more challenging. The entire region where we live had dangerously high winds, so high that schools and even the military base closed. Neighborhoods, including ours, lost some power. My husband and I were trying to complete his deployment checklist even though no one was on base to issue required equipment, provide medications he needed or sign off on checklists. We couldn’t do the tasks we were both needed for, like the Power of Attorney and will, because no lawyers were on base.

Earlier in the spring semester, my department chair asked me if I wanted a meal train for my family. I hate accepting help, but my husband was the primary cook and I was coming home with hours of grading each night, and so rationally I said yes.  This was despite the fact I simply didn’t want help. The meal train was to start on the day of my husband’s original deployment date, a few weeks after his actual departure. When she heard that my husband was leaving early, she rearranged the meal train. 

I went to school Monday after saying goodbye to my husband the night before and came home with food. I came home with food every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the remainder of that school year. Teachers I barely knew left food in the faculty fridge for my family. Everyone brought me more food than I needed: I didn’t have to cook anything for the first three and half months of my husband’s deployment. 

What a gift. What a sign from God that in one of my hardest and most challenging times in my life, this new community in my life was the group to step up and take care of my kids and me with the gift of food. It nourished us physically but it also nourished our spirits and gave me a gift of time. (My husband was just relieved that we weren’t starving.) I didn’t have time to really pray or journal in that era of my life. My days were so packed doing everything at home by myself, but despite the fact that I wasn’t giving consistent time to my friendship with God, God was showing care for me in the actions of my co-workers.

I felt so humbled by something so simple. Something so simple was such a relief. I hated accepting help, but I knew I needed it when I said yes to accepting the gift of a meal train. Never did I imagine that would go from early March to the end of May. God’s love was abundant, and it just kept coming and coming, helping to make those initial months of a broken family feel a bit better.

Each night, my children and I would color a thank you card, and I would post a picture of us with the meal on social media, making our gratitude public, showing the world how lucky we felt to be given such gifts. 

I still tear up thinking about how important this gift of food was to me. I felt God’s love from both people I barely knew and total strangers, and I felt it incredibly deeply. Something so ordinary —food in a time of crisis— was God’s way of tangibly showing me love.

God works like this in our lives all of the time. It’s on us to find him in the ordinary; we are called to zoom in on those details and moments. It’s up to us to notice. St. Ignatius believed that God dealt with us directly and those ordinary moments were gifts with him; it’s in his Suspice prayer:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.

You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.

I try to start every day with a list of 10 things I am grateful for. This list starts with “Thank you for…”, and even though I am not saying it, they are thank yous to God for the ordinary things in my life (and sometimes the not so ordinary things) that I notice. 

Food for thought: What would be on your grateful list today? Is there an ordinary moment where you can look back and see that it was really God showing you love or an extension of friendship?